He didn't say global flood. Maybe he just meant a great prehistoric flood in his backyard.

Sounds like the work of Professor Chaos and General Disarray.

Explanation: †In the South Park episode when Butters takes on the identity of Professor Chaos, he acts on a threat to flood the world by turning on a garden hose.

--------------It's natural to be curious about our world, but the scientific method is just one theory about how to best understand it. †We live in a democracy, which means we should treat every theory equally. - Steven Colbert, I Am America (and So Can You!)

He didn't say global flood. Maybe he just meant a great prehistoric flood in his backyard.

Sounds like the work of Professor Chaos and General Disarray.

Explanation: †In the South Park episode when Butters takes on the identity of Professor Chaos, he acts on a threat to flood the world by turning on a garden hose.

Ah yes the wrath of drip.

Much feared by cats and makes dinosaurs march two by two.

--------------The conservative has but little to fear from the man whose reason is the servant of his passions, but let him beware of him in whom reason has become the greatest and most terrible of the passions.These are the wreckers of outworn empires and civilisations, doubters, disintegrators, deicides.Haldane

DNA and ribosomes are common to all observed forms of life (barring viruses which some say arenít really alive but in any case rely on hijacking existing ribosomes). Since this machinery is so basic itís very close to arguing origins.

However, in neither of these cases is there any specific inferral about the originating mechanism other than it appears to require foresight and planning (intelligence) rather than any haphazard mechanism lacking the ability of abstraction into the future.

Does it DS, really? why? Even "intelligences" find problems with "abstraction into the future". I mean, will DCA be a good thing, Is global warming man made? These are 2 questions DS has asked (and, I note answered in the affirmative EDIT: I mean DS says he "knows" the answer, not that GW is man made, he appears to deny that, or deny that it matters anyway!). Why would you even have to ask the question, if the only thing we know about the designer is that he makes things, we're equal to him now and yet still cannot predict the future with 100% accuracy.

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

Well I'll take a clumsy stab at this - not from a scientific perspective but from a humanities one (may I do that?).

When I think "mechanism" I'm thinking of a means, a medium, a process that is cumulative, as opposed to, say, a magical eruption of something into existence.

I'm not a scientist but I see this kind of "magical" thinking all the time in relation to art - in Dead Poets' Society, "Just lose control!" and poof, instant poetry. "Just seize your imagination!" Poof! Instant art. This is also the Christian fad today: "Just feel! Speak in tongues! Roll around on the floor!" Poof! Instant spirituality. Yes, I have a big, big ole problem with this. There is no organized hierarchy here of learning stages that build one upon the other. It is like adults just appearing on earth without first being children (which is increasingly how popular culture regards children, is it not?).

Leaving aside the issue of science for a moment, what is so "spiritual" about this instantaneity? To me, it's a cheat. Art is work. Writing is work. There is a mechanism (means, medium, and process) in writing and there are cumulative steps in it. Otherwise, what revelation, other than a hammer from heaven smacking you in the head, is there for you to have? "Revelation" for me comes after a long, trying process of working on something, being confused, reading or doing it over and over, until finally, despite (or rather because of) it being comprised of smaller bits of information, my mind finally puts it together and then I understand something.

People at UD want instant answers. "Design" is, essentially, an instant answer without any means of breaking it down into smaller answers, and so there is nothing to learn from design, because it's a revelation without a context. But context is all - our brains don't exist independently of our bodies, and we could not think without hearing, or seeing, or (in the case of that great atheist, Helen Keller) the "language" of touch. All of these perceptions are mechanisms, too. The brain exists in context of the body. In what context does "design" exist? But we're not supposed to ask that, since we're not supposed to ask about the Designer.

--------------Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?

AtBC Poet Laureate

"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive

Too late, it's a package deal. You ask for one, you get both. You've made your choice. †

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

Probably not, given that there is an upper limit on how large a rock can be and still be a rock, rather than say, a black hole. :)

I tried to argue with someone once that there were two possibilties. The omnipotence of god representing infinite energy and all he therefore had to be trapped as a singularity in a black hole. The other possibility was that he was totally impotent to act despite all his power, precisely because he had infinite energy he would have to use all his power to resist and prevent the gravitational collapse caused by that infinite energy thus leaving nothing remaining. The infinity-infinity=zero thingy was not exactly accurate transfinite mathematics but what the h3ll did the creobot know about transfinite mathematics anyway.

Paul

--------------"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. †Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."-John F. Kennedy

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

Well I'll take a clumsy stab at this - not from a scientific perspective but from a humanities one (may I do that?).

When I think "mechanism" I'm thinking of a means, a medium, a process that is cumulative, as opposed to, say, a magical eruption of something into existence.

I'm not a scientist but I see this kind of "magical" thinking all the time in relation to art - in Dead Poets' Society, "Just lose control!" and poof, instant poetry. "Just seize your imagination!" Poof! Instant art....

Kristine -

There is a crucial place for improvisation in art, too, particularly music. †I generate music by means of a process that is analogous to variation and selection in nature in some ways - a sort of dialectic between improvisation (on midi piano) and the harder work of selecting and elaborating this raw material into finished compositions. Hours of mediocre noodling on the keyboard can occasionally yield brief passages of delightful accidental music that I capture, reproduce and elaborate into something resembling art. Very occasionally, quite lovely (if I say so myself) and quite lengthy passages spring out of my hands virtually complete. †So I cultivate improvisation by letting go in exactly the way you describe. †

This is not to assert for an instant that creativity of this kind emerges from nowhere, free of underlying mechanism. †I see it as a sort of meditation that loosens the grip of frontal planning to permit other areas of my brain and body (parietal lobes interacting with basal ganglia to recombine well learned motor plans into novel combinations) to become music generators. And selection may be the most important step in the process.

I'd be willing to bet you originate dance in a similar way.

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Here‚Äôs a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

Wait, wait, wait! I'm either a stegasaurus looking thing or a Godzirra looking thing? Don't get me wrong, dinosaurs are terribly cool but...Who do I petition in order to be on an evlutionary branch further away from DaveTard?

... But context is all - our brains don't exist independently of our bodies, and we could not think without hearing, or seeing, or (in the case of that great atheist, Helen Keller) the "language" of touch. All of these perceptions are mechanisms, too. The brain exists in context of the body...

Sorry to be pedantic, but you may want to rewrite that. I doubt that you really mean that deaf and/or blind people are less capable of thought. The UD eejits could have a field-day with that comment and I don't think that you mean what it implies. OTOH, I could have missread you (I am on my 2nd bottle of wine).

Wait, wait, wait! †I'm either a stegasaurus looking thing or a Godzirra looking thing? †Don't get me wrong, dinosaurs are terribly cool but...Who do I petition in order to be on an evlutionary branch further away from DaveTard?

I would guess GodBogAllah the Disembodied Telic Entity.

Maybe shoot for being a Dimetrodon. Really cool looking and they actually weren't dinosaurs.

...much cooler than those wussy lizards that Lenny collects.

--------------"Rich is just mad because he thought all titties had fur on them until last week when a shorn transvestite ruined his childhood dreams by jumping out of a spider man cake and man boobing him in the face lips." - Erasmus

... But context is all - our brains don't exist independently of our bodies, and we could not think without hearing, or seeing, or (in the case of that great atheist, Helen Keller) the "language" of touch. All of these perceptions are mechanisms, too. The brain exists in context of the body...

Sorry to be pedantic, but you may want to rewrite that. I doubt that you really mean that deaf and/or blind people are less capable of thought. The UD eejits could have a field-day with that comment and I don't think that you mean what it implies. OTOH, I could have missread you (I am on my 2nd bottle of wine).

You misread me because I did not say "hearing AND seeing," and because you didn't include the example of Hellen Keller after the second "or."

Hearing OR seeing OR touch. The brain needs stimulation in order to develop and think.

Or to put it another way, take the sad case of "closet children." In extreme cases, they are given no stimulation (light, sound, touch) and upon discovery their language/cognitive skills have never developed. The UDudes know this and know what I mean. They're the ones who are harping upon what other people should teach their children, after all. (Why teach anybody anything if "thinking just happens" without the brain, without a mechanism? Why do we need education at all, then? Isn't that a naturalistic assumption in itself?)

If anybody wants to misquote what I said then they confirm my suspicion of them being liars.

--------------Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?

AtBC Poet Laureate

"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

Well I'll take a clumsy stab at this - not from a scientific perspective but from a humanities one (may I do that?).

When I think "mechanism" I'm thinking of a means, a medium, a process that is cumulative, as opposed to, say, a magical eruption of something into existence.

As you suggest, I think that when we discuss mechanism, we are referring to the process of putting ink to paper to tell a story, or drawing a bow across a string to evoke a feeling, or laying stones for a foundation to build a bridge; or in the case of Biblical Creationism, God took the clay of the Earth and breathed life into it; or with Intelligent Design, the unspecified designer manipulated the genome by some unspecified method, at some unspecified time, for some unspecified purpose.

Quote (Kristine @ Mar. 31 2007,10:57)

Poof! Instant art.

Even if we assume that thought itself is completely metaphysical, spiritual and ineffable, the creation of art requires manipulating some aspect of the real world. The inspiration might arguably be instantaneous, but the art requires an act in the natural world.

--------------Zachriel, angel that rules over memory, presides over the planet Jupiter.Member AMF, Angelic Motive ForcePushing planets on celestial spheres ‚ÄĒ one epoch at a time.

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

Well I'll take a clumsy stab at this - not from a scientific perspective but from a humanities one (may I do that?).

When I think "mechanism" I'm thinking of a means, a medium, a process that is cumulative, as opposed to, say, a magical eruption of something into existence.

I'm not a scientist but I see this kind of "magical" thinking all the time in relation to art - in Dead Poets' Society, "Just lose control!" and poof, instant poetry. "Just seize your imagination!" Poof! Instant art....

Kristine -

There is a crucial place for improvisation in art, too, particularly music. †I generate music by means of a process that is analogous to variation and selection in nature in some ways - a sort of dialectic between improvisation (on midi piano) and the harder work of selecting and elaborating this raw material into finished compositions. Hours of mediocre noodling on the keyboard can occasionally yield brief passages of delightful accidental music that I capture, reproduce and elaborate into something resembling art. Very occasionally, quite lovely (if I say so myself) and quite lengthy passages spring out of my hands virtually complete. †So I cultivate improvisation by letting go in exactly the way you describe. †

This is not to assert for an instant that creativity of this kind emerges from nowhere, free of underlying mechanism. †I see it as a sort of meditation that loosens the grip of frontal planning to permit other areas of my brain and body (parietal lobes interacting with basal ganglia to recombine well learned motor plans into novel combinations) to become music generators. And selection may be the most important step in the process.

I'd be willing to bet you originate dance in a similar way.

It's interesting that you would raise that objection, because Middle Eastern cabaret dance (as opposed to traditional folk dances or American cabaret) is entirely improvisation. It is not memorized and repeated as, say, ballet routines are.

But that underscores my point. The steps themselves are learned and repeated. You must do this first before you can improvise. "Hours of mediocre noodling on the keyboard" is a mechanism, no? The ability to "yield brief passages of delightful accidental music," (i.e., to experience inspiration) requires discipline. You don't just bang anything on the piano because "that's how I feel" and call that inspiration. (I play the piano too, but I cannot compose music.) Likewise, I don't sit around in "waiting for inspiration" when I write - I pitch a lot of drafts into the wastebasket. And little Egyptian girls imitate their grandmothers, who teach them, before they start working at 5-star hotels (increasingly less now, due to threats from fundamentalists).

"Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand" Look at what he's saying - not only that our cognitive understanding is limited, but that we can never understand how the brain works. That's hogwash. Poof, whole therapies for brain-injury victims, gone in the name of "design." Poof, whole behavioral therapies gone, too. (I'm not a fan of behavioralist theory but I'm a big fan of behavioralist techniques because they work.) Poof, all this research that I'm learning about how people use libraries, gone too. Why do people need to sacrifice all this on the narrow altar of "design?" That's my essential point here.

--------------Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?

AtBC Poet Laureate

"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive

Hearing OR seeing OR touch. The brain needs stimulation in order to develop and think.

You are absolutely correct to emphasize that even the most ephemeral and ineffable dimensions of experience (cognition, consciousness, intentionality, etc.) are at some level embodied. That embodiment loops through sensory-motor activity and out into the physical and social world, and in turn partakes of "distributed cognition." †A brain in a beaker with no sensory/motor connectons is unlikely to be an experiencing or thinking brain. (Here's hoping I haven't offended brains in beakers everywhere).

And, as you say, even genuine human design typically consists in trial and error and many iterations of selection. † †

Quote

But that underscores my point. The steps themselves are learned and repeated. You must do this first before you can improvise. "Hours of mediocre noodling on the keyboard" is a mechanism, no? The ability to "yield brief passages of delightful accidental music," (i.e., to experience inspiration) requires discipline. You don't just bang anything on the piano because "that's how I feel" and call that inspiration. (I play the piano too, but I cannot compose music.)

We're on the same page. †The only reason I can improvise at all is because, over decades, I have laid down numerous over-learned motor plans and well rehearsed automaticities that may be recombined at times into something novel. †And, at the same time, I am trapped into my particular stylistic modes by this method, unable to easily rise above it and compose in a purely representational medium (e.g. musical notation). †Which is why I'll forever be an amateur.

That said, and with those years of rehearsal laid down, there something to be said for getting out of the way and observing what emerges, which can occasionally be surprising.

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Here‚Äôs a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

The term "design" has several meanings, including "to plan". But the claim of Intelligent Design isn't merely that the Designer had a thought, but that the Designer manipulated biology. And this requires a mechanism. And the mechanism connects the Designer with his creation.

As with all sciences which detect "design", we compare the specific instance to known cases, and attempt to link the perpetrator, his motives and modus operandi, with the crime. The most fundamental principle of forensics is that "Every contact leaves a trace". If biology is an ID-machine, then we seek evidence of the mechanism and the nature of the mechanic.

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

The term "design" has several meanings, including "to plan". But the claim of Intelligent Design isn't merely that the Designer had a thought, but that the Designer manipulated biology. And this requires a mechanism. And the mechanism connects the Designer with his creation.

Your distinction is calls to mind Howard Van Till's oft repeated distinction of the "mind-like" versus "hand-like" phases of any instance of design - and ID's obstinate silence on the latter.

--------------Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.

"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."- David Foster Wallace

"Here‚Äôs a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."- Barry Arrington

Re somebody's "I cannot walk one mile, or dig one foot deep in my back yard without seeing ďobviousĒ evidence of a great prehistoric flood"

My thought on that is that evidence of a world-wide event would have to be, well, world-wide: a pattern that could be seen all around the world. (Example: traces of a particular element such as iridium, at depths of the same age, whereever stuff of that age didn't get eroded away in the meantime.)

Observations made within a backyard, or even over a distance of only one mile, just would not suffice for that.

(I guess my problem is that I'm trying to apply logic to the question, huh?)

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

The term "design" has several meanings, including "to plan". But the claim of Intelligent Design isn't merely that the Designer had a thought, but that the Designer manipulated biology. And this requires a mechanism. And the mechanism connects the Designer with his creation.

Your distinction is calls to mind Howard Van Till's oft repeated distinction of the "mind-like" versus "hand-like" phases of any instance of design - and ID's obstinate silence on the latter.

Intelligent Design advocates confuse nearly all relevant terminology, such as when Febble took Dembski's definition of "intelligent" at face value and reached the arguably valid conclusion that orthodox evolutionary mechanisms are "intelligent" (and was consequently banned by DaveScot). Other common problems concern the nature of the scientific method, naturalism, randomness and pattern, not to mention irreducible complexity, complex specified information, and information generally.

--------------Zachriel, angel that rules over memory, presides over the planet Jupiter.Member AMF, Angelic Motive ForcePushing planets on celestial spheres ‚ÄĒ one epoch at a time.

The argument that design cannot be detected is such a pathetic lie that it I am amazed at how brazenly it is made by the opponents of ID.

Who says design cannot be detected? Look for the label! The point is rather that ID can provide no evidence whatsoever for the intelligent design of the objects they claim can only have arisen via that intelligent design. Jehu then argues with nasa

Quote

The argument from SETI scientists attempting to distancte themselves from a design inference is hilarious

Yes. If that's funny imagine how funny you are Jehu. At least those scientists are working at SETI. Or, to put it another way, working scientists. Who do you think knows more about it, you, anonymous poster at UD, or NASA scientists? The reason nobody's "refuting" ID is that you cant play ball with somebody who's not turned up to the game! ID publishes books, not papers. Scripted lectures, not discussion conferences (what's to discuss, the bible is unchanging?)

Also, is this what it has come to for ID? The article is headed by DS

Quote

Itís a good example of how the design inference has been employed for practical matters.

Notice

Quote

how the design inference

THE design inference, or to put it another way, is it designed? I can only take it to mean that, as he does not go into details. No pathetic level of detail here, no siree, not going to tell you how this is relevant to ID thinks DS. He's just going to publish it and see what the cattle make of it.So, Dembski gets to define and write how the design inference is to be used, and somebody else can also use the very same method to detect design. Or can they?Have they? Is DS saying that Lt. Flipper uses Dembski's methods, or just the design inference, or what exactly? Seems to me that ID is co-opting Lt. Flipper's ability to spot designed piles of rocks!LinkIt's pathetic how they attempt to shuffle into the spotlight aimed at another and attempt to catch some reflected light.

ID - The science of spotting news story's and seeing how you can create a spin on them to promote your cause which is in the end all about selling books to rubes. And dusting off the cheesy poof stained hands before the wife gets home.

--------------I also mentioned that He'd have to give me a thorough explanation as to *why* I must "eat human babies".FTK

if there are even critical flaws in Gaugerís work, the evo mat narrative cannot standGordon Mullings

Why oh why do people think that mechanism is so necessary to design detection? Why canít they see that minds donít operate by any mechanism that we can understand and that mechanism resides in the absence of design.

The term "design" has several meanings, including "to plan". But the claim of Intelligent Design isn't merely that the Designer had a thought, but that the Designer manipulated biology. And this requires a mechanism. And the mechanism connects the Designer with his creation.

Your distinction is calls to mind Howard Van Till's oft repeated distinction of the "mind-like" versus "hand-like" phases of any instance of design - and ID's obstinate silence on the latter.

To complicate things, Dembski has insisted that people should not think of Intelligent Design as a Designer constructing things "to spec." (This is to shore up the "intelligent design does not mean optimal design" argument.)

So, even if design theory doesn't need to match evolution's "pathetic level of detail" in explaining how the eye was designed, it still has to come up with a mechanism for why it was 1) designed so poorly (necessitating surgery and my contact lenses) or 2) what messed with the Designer's original design.

Which means I'm finally going to read a certain essay by Dembski. (Whoop-de-doo, I think I can actually turn it into a homework assignment, and I'm gonna. Exaptation. It exists, people!

--------------Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?

AtBC Poet Laureate

"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive

The argument from SETI scientists attempting to distancte themselves from a design inference is hilarious

It should also be pointed out that IDers are simply demonstrating their ignorance when they yammer stupidly about "SETI tries to detect design !!!!!!" The simple fact is that SETI is NOT looking for any "design" -- indeed, SETI doesn't pay any attention at all whatsoever, in any way, to the CONTENT of the signals they are looking for. All they are looking for is a narrow-band radio signal ------ something not currently known to occur naturally.